Queer Theory

Description

Gender and sexual preference are often assumed to be fixed and unchanging things.
This is a paradigm that feminists and homosexual writers have taken as an
unchallenged assumption as they seek to shift and establish fixed positions
within the sexual spectra.

Queer Theory challenges this assumption,
reframing sexuality as
being socially constructed and hence varying with context. It is
'anti-essentialist' in rejecting an gender as being in a person's unchanging
essence. Thus a person in a
gay club may act and feel a lot more homosexual than when they are out with work
friends.

Even at the biological level, there is not a strict male-female divide, for
example with various combinations of X and Y chromosomes and varying genetic
influences.

The construction of identity is influenced by a wide number of factors, from
Lacan's
notion of language and symbolic codes in the
symbolic register to social pressures of
conforming. Queer Theory simply adds
gender and sexual preference to an already long list of variables.

Discussion

Queer Theory originated in
Judith Butler's 1990 book Gender
Trouble and was first described with the term in Case (1971).The immediate effect of Queer Theory is to destabilize all other
notions of gender and sexuality. Even various forms which are commonly seen as
perversion may be framed as temporary destinations.

Butler was influenced by
Michel Foucault, who
argued that homosexuality was a subject position
within culture, rather than a personality type per se. He argued that this
position developed within 19th century psychological sciences.

Queer Theory bumps into the 'nature vs. nurture' debate. Critics
point to the relatively fixed aspects of genetics, whilst queer theorists focus
on interactions with others. As with many young fields, there are subdivisions
within the school of thought and different theorists have their own viewpoint
that often conflicts with others.